Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Three young Americans
on vacation captivated the world last week when they risked their lives to save
hundreds of train travelers in Europe from a terrorist attack.

“They are truly heroes,”
said Jane Hartley, U.S. ambassador to France. “When most of us would run away,
Spencer, Alek and Anthony ran into the line of fire, saying `Let’s go!’ Those
words changed the fate of many.”

As we go about our ordinary
days, celebrating the extraordinary acts of Spencer Stone, 23, Alek Skarlatos,
22, and Anthony Sadler, 23, a question arises: Would I do what they did?

“I hope I would,” my
dentist said as he cleaned my teeth. Me too, although I hope never to find out.

Nobody wants to think
what might have happened had the three buddies not been aboard that particular
car on the high-speed train traveling from Amsterdam to Paris. The three acted
instantly.

“It was either do
something or die,” said Sadler, a student at Sacramento State University. The
joyous news is that nobody died.

Skarlatos, a specialist
in the Oregon National Guard just back from nine months in Afghanistan, spotted
the shirtless guy with an AK-47 rifle strapped to his chest.

“Let’s go!” he said. The
three tackled the heavily armed Moroccan Ayoub El Khazzani, 25, who viciously slashed
Stone, an airman first class in the U.S. Air Force, with a box cutter. British
businessman Chris Norman, 62, an IT consultant, heard “Let’s go!” and joined
the three Americans. He tied up El Khazzani.

Stone nearly lost his
left thumb and suffered other wounds, but he still saved the life of Mark
Moogalian, 51, a French-American professor at the Sorbonne. Moogalian, originally
from Midlothian, Va., is also a hero.

Moments earlier, Moogalian
tried to wrest the rifle from the terrorist and was shot in the neck. Bleeding
profusely, he could have died but for Stone, an EMT who used his uninjured hand
to apply pressure to Moogalian’s neck to stop the bleeding until help arrived.

“Let’s go!” reminds
many Americans of other heroes. On Sept. 11, 2001, “Let’s roll!” was the rallying
cry of Todd Beamer and other passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 who tried
to storm the cockpit, where terrorists had taken over the plane, rather than
allow the terrorists to fly it into the U.S. Capitol. The passengers sacrificed
their lives to change the fate of many.

The American friends
were just 9 or 10 years old on 9/11 and have grown up under the constant threat
of terrorism. The military men said their training kicked in on the train.

“It was not really a
conscious decision,” Skarlatos told reporters. “We just decided to act … It was
gut instinct.”

French President
Francois Hollande, who presented the Legion of Honor to the Americans and
Norman, said: “We are still vulnerable. This is further evidence that we must prepare
ourselves for more assaults, and thus we must protect ourselves.” Moogalian and
a Frenchman who confronted the gunman will receive the honor later, authorities
said.

Not only France needs
to be watchful.

U.S. government reports
have warned for years that America’s passenger rail system is vulnerable to
terrorist attack. Whether Congress should pour billions into tightening
passenger rail security and whether passengers would put up with the time and
inconvenience required is open for debate.

The busiest U.S. train
stations do have armed guards, plain-clothes officers who watch for suspicious
behavior, random passenger and bag checks and bomb-sniffing dogs, but Amtrak
carries about 32 million passengers a year to 500 destinations in 46 states.
Every day, more than 86,000 passengers ride more than 300 Amtrak trains. Most stations
have minimal security.

Three times as many passengers take the train as fly between Washington
and New York. Between New York and Boston, trains carry more riders than all of
the airlines combined, Amtrak says.

For the foreseeable
future, it’s up to passengers to stay vigilant. “If you see something, say
something” still applies. But in a rare, horrifying moment, ordinary people may
have to do something extraordinary.

British businessman Norman,
who lives in France and travels frequently, had thought ahead about the
nightmare scenario.

“My position was, I’m not going to be the guy
who dies sitting down,” he told CNN. “If you’re going to die, try to do
something about it.”

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Here we go again. Donald Trump’s
proposal to stop birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants
is forcing Republicans into a debate they can’t win and should have ended
decades ago.

In 1996, the Republican Party Platform
called for a constitutional amendment to end automatic citizenship for children
born to parents who are in the country illegally or are not long-term
residents. The party's presidential and vice presidential nominees Bob Dole and
Jack Kemp both rejected the plank.

“Born in America, you’re an American,”
Kemp declared.

But that wasn’t the last word.

Since 2007, as anti-immigrant
sentiment has flowed, a few congressional Republicans have backed bills to stop
birthright citizenship. A measure by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, has 27
cosponsors, all Republicans.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of
the House Judiciary Committee, said at a hearing on birthright citizenship in
April that he rarely has a conversation about immigration policy without
someone asking about automatic citizenship.

“The question of whether our
forefathers meant for birthright citizenship in all circumstances to be the law
of the land is far from settled. In any event we must still determine if it is
the right policy for America today,” Goodlatte said.

But there’s little appetite for the
issue in the Senate, even among Republicans. A bill introduced by Sen. David
Vitter of Louisiana has zero cosponsors.

Now comes Trump and his extreme immigration
plan released Sunday. He cited Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid as wanting
to end birthright citizenship, which Reid did -- in 1993. By 1999 Reid called
his own proposal an embarrassment, high on his “list of mistakes.”

“I
didn’t understand the issue,” Reid explained, as the Las Vegas Review-Journal
reported in December 1999. “I’m embarrassed that I made such a proposal.”

“It is disturbing that Republican
presidential candidates continue to embrace extreme anti-immigrant positions as
core pieces of their immigration platform,” Lorella Praeli, Hillary for America
Latino Outreach director, said in a statement.

If Democrats now are united behind
birthright citizenship, Republicans are in disarray. Presidential hopefuls
Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal support ending automatic citizenship. Others, including
Lindsey Graham, John Kasich, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum have supported
changing the law in the past.

Mike Huckabee and Jeb Bush prefer
sticking with the law.

“Mr. Trump can say that he’s for this
because people are frustrated that it’s abused. But we ought to fix the problem
rather than take away rights,” Bush said on CBS. There must be ways short of a
constitutional amendment to deal with the phenomenon of pregnant women entering
the country to give birth so that their babies become citizens, Bush said.

Bush
knows his brother George got 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in the 2004
presidential election, according to exit polls, a modern record for a
Republican. In 2012, Mitt Romney won just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote,
after his comment that undocumented immigrants should “self deport.”

The Constitution as originally written
did not define citizenship, but since after the Civil War, anyone born in the
United States has been a citizen. The 14th Amendment in 1868, a
Reconstruction measure pressed by Republicans, overturned the Supreme Court’s odious
Dred Scott decision that no black persons who had been “imported into the
country, and sold as slaves” or their descendants could ever become citizens.

The 14thAmendment states: “All persons born or
naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside.”

In 1898, the Supreme Court ruled that
a child born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a citizen even though the
parents could never become citizens because of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Changing the law would require passage
of a constitutional amendment, a feat of bipartisanship nearly unimaginable in
this era. Most legal scholars consider the 14thamendment settled.

So do pragmatic Republicans,
those who actually want to win in 2016 – and not merely make debating points.

“If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even
be talking about immigration,” Trump bragged at the first Republican
candidates' debate. He’s right. Most GOP candidates would prefer not to
alienate a large swath of Hispanic and other immigrant voters with a plan
that’s going nowhere.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Novelist Henry James said the two most beautiful
words in the English language are summer afternoon. I’d say that on any summer
afternoon, the two words that bring joy and hope are “Play ball!”

What better escape from the bizarre
2016 presidential race and assorted national and international crises than an
afternoon or evening outside at the ball park? In August, we may dream about
October but we don’t fret. Much.

In the nation’s capital, baseball
comes with a side of presidential history. At other
major league ballparks, sausages or pierogies are racing mascots, but in Washington
it’s the Racing Presidents who compete in a fourth-inning sprint down the warning
track and foul line. They are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham
Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and, as of last month, Calvin
Coolidge.

Silent Cal seemed an odd addition to
the presidents, but he did attend 10 baseball games while he was in office from
1923 to 1929. He was the first president to attend a World Series opener and
the first to throw out a first pitch at a World Series game.

Coolidge didn’t lose an election in 30
years in politics, so he was thought lucky. Fans credited the “Coolidge luck”
with the Washington Senators’ winning two of their three pennants. They won the
1924 World Series and the American League championships in 1925, during his
tenure.

These
days, a president who ventures into a stadium may get booed. That’s what
happened when President Barack Obama threw out the first pitch of the season at
Nationals Park in 2010. What did he expect when he put on a Chicago White Sox
cap?

Coolidge wasn’t much of a baseball fan,
but his wife, first lady Grace Coolidge, was.

Called the “first lady of baseball,” she
kept a scorecard at games and when she couldn’t be there in person listened on
the radio. The Coolidges were in the stands at the first game of the 1924 World
Series, when the president decided it was time to go back to the White House. The
score was 2-2 in the ninth inning.

“When he rose to leave, the first
lady, resplendent in her `good luck’ necklace of seven ivory elephants,
snapped, `Where do you think you’re going? You sit down,’ seizing his coattails
to emphasize her point. Coolidge obeyed and stayed on to see the Giants win in
extra innings,” William Bushong, chief historian of the White House Historical
Association, writes in an essay.

Grace Coolidge told a presidential
historian that her husband never played baseball or any other sport, and “He
did not share my enthusiasm for baseball,” John Sayle Watterson reports in his
2009 book, “The Games Presidents Play: Sports and the Presidency.”

Watterson knocks Coolidge as “athletically
challenged,” the worst natural athlete in presidential history from 1901 to
2005.

The new focus on Coolidge and baseball
is the result of an unusual partnership. For the first time, the historical
association, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the White House and educating
the public, has joined in a multi-year agreement with a sports team, the
Nationals.

The 30th president is also the
subject of the association’s 2015 official Christmas ornament, which celebrates
Coolidge’s lighting in 1923 of the first national Christmas tree on the
Ellipse. The ornament is itself a Christmas tree with 14 decorations that
commemorate events in Coolidge’s life, including a baseball. An LED light is
incorporated in the design, another first.

Racing Presidents make personal
appearances outside the ball park, and Coolidge likely will be in demand. While
most
historians rank him among our worst presidents, blaming his policies for the
start of the Great Depression in 1929, Coolidge is the
darling of Tea Partiers and right-wing talkers, who love his disaffection for
big government and taxes.

Ronald Reagan put Coolidge’s portrait in the Oval
Office and praised his policies, and several books recently have tried to put
Coolidge’s policies in a better light.

Today’s Washington fans hope for a revival of the
Coolidge luck when they hear those magic words: “Play ball!”

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

A couple of
weeks ago, I wrote in this space about the opportunity cities and towns in the
South have as they weigh moving Confederate monuments from streets and parks to
museums.

If cities relocate
the statues, as I believe some will, they then can move on to consider new
monuments that reflect modern sensibilities. Surely, 150 years after the Civil
War we can think beyond the bronze hero on a horse and find other men – and
women – whose accomplishments and stories we want to pass to future
generations.

Traditionally
in this country we have memorialized presidents, generals and victims of disasters.
In the 21st century we can widen our horizons and honor the artists,
athletes, composers, entrepreneurs, explorers, scientists, writers and others who
have contributed to America’s rich cultural history.

I asked
readers to email me their answers to the question: To whom – or what – would
you like to see a monument in your community? Today I share your ideas.

This is
nothing close to a scientific sample, but several people who wrote me objected
to my guess that a year from now we’ll find more Confederate statues in museums
and fewer in streets and parks. They made it clear they want the Confederate
statues to stay right where they are, thank you.

“We are remembering our Confederate ancestors
who fought in a long and brutal war for a wide range of reasons – and not
necessarily for slavery,” a reader from Richmond, Va. , wrote.

He insisted that Confederate memorials are no more backward-looking
or divisive than memorials to black soldiers who fought for the Union.

“`Moving
on,’ as you recommend, should not mean taking down or hiding away all things
Confederate. Rather it should mean constructively adding to that national
memory and narrative – not destructively subtracting from it,” he said.

Another reader
wrote: “I don’t want to change my American history. For better or worse, it is
what it is. You want to add to it, fine.”

Neither offered
any names for new monuments. One even defied me to find a leader “who doesn’t
lie to us every other day. Someone who cares about this country and not his
party. I cannot.”

Whoa. The last thing we need is a monument to a
living politician.

But my
correspondents raise an excellent point. Even if Confederate statues stay in
place, this is a good time to consider adding to the mix of outdoor memorials.

A supporter
of a proposed Fallen Heroes Monument in Richmond told me about a campaign by
local veterans to honor on Monument Avenue the collective sacrifice of Richmond’s
citizens in foreign wars.

While many other
communities have memorials commemorating the generations that have answered the
call to military service overseas, Richmond does not.

Most
Confederate monuments were paid originally by private funds. In our time, too,
individuals are stepping up to contribute.

For example,
in New York’s Central Park, there are 22 statues honoring men but not one
honors a woman. Instead, there are statues of fictional characters -- Alice in
Wonderland, Mother Goose, Juliet (with Romeo) and various nymphs and angels. A
fundraising campaign is underway to build a monument to Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and Susan B. Anthony, along with other pioneers of women’s rights.

Several
readers suggested a monument honoring Maggie L. Walker, the Virginia civil
rights activist and entrepreneur. Walker was the first African-American woman
to found and be president of a bank. Her childhood home in Richmond’s Jackson
Ward neighborhood is a National Historic Site operated by the National Park
Service.

Walker
deserves “a statue or some sort of memorial, if not on Monument Avenue, then in
a prominent place,” wrote one woman, who called the Confederate statues along
Richmond’s Monument Avenue “great examples of civic art of the times” they were
built.

“I don’t
want the city to spend any money removing them but if private groups want to do
this, I’d enjoy a discussion of this idea,” she said.

And she proposed
something we all may be able to agree on that could be done soon: Rename
Jefferson Davis Highway, as parts of U.S. Route 1 through the South are called.

“If another
name is needed, how about Reconciliation Highway?” she said. It’s a good
start.